*FACTORS THAT BALANCE RANGED COMBAT IN GW2:*
Guild Wars 2 is a game that was designed to have players read their opponent's skill cues. To this effect, ANet has designed several manners of reading an opponent such as:
* Instant-cast
* Post-cast delay
* Red circle
* Projectile
* On-caster visual cue
* Projectile that can be blocked, reflected or destroyed.

However, despite these various cues, there are a many slew of skills in GW2 that forego 2 or more of the above balancing principles. These skills should be looked at critically and probably nerfed or functionally changed in order to bring them into line with how combat should appear in-game. Giving certain weapon sets or play-styles free hits for certain skill usage in a game where the "holy trinity" is absent is asking for trouble. *Overpowered ranged skills need to be culled in this game and wrangled back into obedience governed by the balancing principles listed above.*

*A STATEMENT ON THE EXISTENCE OF "ENERGY" IN GW2*
People say that GW2 has no energy system. While there is no concrete resource system in place in GW2 (aside from Initiative which we see with the Thief), there is a resource that governs whether or not a player can use a skill: *cast-time*.

Having a lot of skills available to a player is fine so long as some of the more powerful skills are limited in scope by the amount of time that a player has to invest to those skills in order to get the most out of them. A fine example is [Meteor Shower]. Firm but fair, [Meteor Shower] can inflict devastating amounts of damage, but with a 3¾-second long channel for maximum effect, the elementalist really needs to either pop some sort of damage mitigation skill or position him/herself properly while using while also aiming the AoE properly. [Meteor Shower] is not something that you can just shoot off mid-fight just because it happens to be off cool-down. That's the "mana" limitation. Time limits its viability as a skill despite there being no mana to govern its on-the-spot usage. Not only does an Elementalist need to channel the skill for a good 1 to 1½ seconds before a single meteor even begins to fall, [Meteor Shower] is a very lack-luster skill if not channeled to its full extent because of its nature as a charge-up skill. The longer that an Elementalist channels [Meteor Shower], the more meteors actually fall.

There should be many more skills like [Meteor Shower]. In fact, [Churning Earth] used to use a charge-up mechanic but this was changed after Beta Weekend Event 1 without any explanation. Charge-up mechanics and long cast-times are the true key to balancing skills that have no post-cast effect delays. *Having longer cast-times on many powerful skills could help clear up the generally messy combat that players often encounter in PvP and also cull the general tendency to spam skills on cool-down (or whenever you have enough initiative) which really is the biggest plague on GW2 PvP.*

I made this post on the sPvP forum in the GW2 forum. I also followed up that post with a long list of concrete changes to currently implemented skills that should rectify a lot of the issues that I expressed in the above paragraphs. The response that I received from the GW2 community was really nothing but angry shouting. I fear that they are too used to playing with broken systems to see anything else. Would someone from here take a look at the skill balances and maybe give their own response (either here or in the thread)? I'm just looking to find a broader audience and maybe some more refined opinions.

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